Barcelona Day 2

After a pretty good night's sleep, I woke up at 9:30 in the morning.  Right away, we all went to get breakfast.  The hostel had a decent breakfast spread including toast, muffins, cereal, and café con leche.  Once we finished eating, we got ready and then headed out to see Barcelona!

Our first stop was Casa Batlló.  As I mentioned before, this is an apartment designed by Antoni Gaudí.  When you walk down the street, this building immediately catches your attention because it's like no other building you've seen.  Using designs found in nature, Gaudí makes his building look like an under-the-sea paradise.  Apparently, the inside as well as the terrace areas are just as impressive as the outside facade.

Casa Batlló.  The balconies are designed in the shape of a mask.

Detail of Casa Batlló

From there, we walked to la Sagrada Familia, an enormous, impressive, and beautiful church designed by the architect genius Gaudí.  Gaudí began working on the project in 1883, but his death in 1926, as well as other factors like the Spanish Civil War, caused delays in the completion of the church.  La Sagrada Familia is still currently underconstruction with the goal to complete it by 2026, the one-hundred year anniversary of Gaudí's death.

The outside facade of the church is filled with intricate details and designs that combine nature decorations with visual representations of the Bible.  Here are some of my pictures from the outside of la Sagrada Familia:

Front of la Sagrada Familia

Front and side view of the church.  The lighter facade on the left is the part that has been constructed more recently.

Back of la Sagrada Familia

Detail of the facade on the back of the church

We wanted to go inside the church, but the line was really long and moving slowly because we arrived later in the day.  We decided that we would get up early on Saturday so we could see the inside and take an elevator to the top of the church.

Once we finished taking lots of pictures of la Sagrada Familia, we then traveled to another one of Gaudí's projects, Park Guell (built from 1900-1914).  It began as a housing project, but the idea was soon abandoned.  Now, it serves as a beautiful park that all can enjoy.

Words cannot express how amazing this park is.  I try and fail to come up with adjectives to describe the use of interesting shapes and landscapes.

So pretty! 

View from the opposite side.  I love the flowers.

View from the top of the structure

As you continue walking, you arrive to the open space plaza area.  This was originally constructed to be a market for those who lived in the houses.  From the balcony area, you can view the entire city of Barcelona and even see Gaudí's Sagrada Familia in the distance.

The balcony which doubles as a bench located on the plaza area.  It looks out over a beautiful view of Barcelona.

Another cool structure that you can walk through.  This is shaped like an ocean wave.

Then, we walked underneath the plaza to the front entrance of the park where we saw the lizard, which is the symbol of the park, and the gingerbread houses.

Front entrance to Park Guell.  The top of the building is where the the plaza is located.

The gingerbread houses in the front of Park Guell.  I'm not sure if they are actually called gingerbread houses, but they get the nickname because they look like a gingerbread house from Hansel and Gretel.

Even though it feels like we saw so much of the park, we actually only walked around a very small portion of it.  Someday when I return to Spain, I would love to spend an entire day walking through the park.

Since it was quite the walk to Park Guell, we decided to take the bus back to our hostel.  We got a little nap in before we began our fun evening.

Our hostel was great because it provided many tours throughout the city.  For our evening entertainment, we took a tour where we got tapas at a local restaurant and watched a flamenco show.

Tapas!  The two on the left were croquettes with chorizo while the three on the right were ham and cheese.

The flamenco show was really cool.  We have learned a lot about flamenco in my culture class, so it was neat to actually see a performance.  A drummer, guitar player, and a male and female singer made up the "flamenco band."  Two female dancers performed together and then did solo dances.  It is incredible how fast they are able to tap their feet!

Flamenco dancers with the band behind them

Up-close on the dancers

After the performance, we decided to return to the hostel to get some sleep before our early day on Saturday.